by Eric Kramer
“I have accessed a portion the weapons systems of the Sysop exoskeleton, and established a handshake with it. Be aware, there are some risks. I am unsure how long this system has been in disuse. Maintenance logs are corrupted, as they show approximately five thousand years since the last maintenance cycle.”
Saat barely heard, terror turning to awe as the sledgehammer slowed to a crawl, inching down towards him.
“How did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Slow him down … Look! His hammer is almost frozen still!”
“Oh that’s not me, that’s the suit. You’re lucky. The interface must have grafted well enough to allow sensorial time dilation. Things are still happening at a normal pace; you are just observing everything at a much higher frame rate, so to speak. It won’t last more than a second real-time, or your body’s neurotransmitter stores will be completely drained.”
Once again, Saat had the odd feeling he was hearing gibberish, but somehow understanding it.
“I am going to let the suit handle these aggressors. I have managed to initialize some sensor blisters, and, based on what I’m reading, I believe we need to leave this area. Our activities have attracted attention that we cannot handle in our present state.”
As the voice spoke, liquid metal oozed from Saat’s chest, forming a spear. It extended out, reaching the raider and penetrated his chest without a sound. Saat watched, horrified, as the spear morphed into the same latticework as his arm, blossoming and opening up the raider until sunlight leaked through, a slow golden syrup oozing forward. What seemed like a few seconds later, a strange bass tone emanated from the man’s chest. Saat realized it was the sound of the spear-thing penetrating the man, just now arriving to him.
This voice … this god … can slow down sound too?
“You should move out of the way of that hammer. Time’s about to catch up to you.” Distracted by what he was seeing, Saat hadn’t noticed that the sledgehammer was now only inches away from his head. He scooted out from underneath it, the cold metal scraping against his forehead.
Sand puffed up next to him as the hammer slammed next to his head. Something wet hit his face, and Saat reached up, pulling a shred of meat off his cheek. He looked around, but the raider with the sledgehammer was gone, leaving behind only a spray of red on the desert floor.
Saat pushed himself up into a sitting position as the liquid metal retraced back around his ribs and into his spine. The other raider, face covered in swaths of dirty cloth, regarded him through dark goggles before turning and running back in the direction of the village.
“Saat, I need to know. Where am I? Where is my chrysalis? What is going on? I just completed an analysis. There are whole sectors of my mind that are partitioned off, which can only mean there has been corruption of my developed personality. Have I been disabled for a long time?”
Saat ignored the question, because he didn’t know the answer. Struggling to his feet, he shaded his eyes, looking towards the village and the raider running towards it. The sun was going down. Soon it would be night. He had to find shelter before then.
“God, we have to go back to town. To Auburn. I need to get my sister. She’s not as old as I am. I’m the only one who can protect her.”
“Are you praying?”
“No … You’re a god. I’m talking to you.”
“No, I am a Tesla combat AI. You can choose a name for me, if you would like, or just call me by my serial: CHRYSALISWEAPONAI.45.3871.11.2. There is a God … I have memories of praying to Him, although the memories are without definition. Regardless, I am not a god.”
“Uh, I don’t know what to call you. Look, I need to go that way. Towards where that raider went. You can do things … things that can hurt the raiders. Kill them. So I can rescue my sister. Can you help me?”
“Doubtful. As I said, this suit’s battery is almost dead. None of the data from it is readable. It could last another hundred years; it could go out in a few seconds.”
“Then I’ll do it without you.”
Saat squared his shoulders and began moving towards Auburn. Flames licked the sky now, in sharp relief against the gloom of the fast-approaching evening. He broke into a light jog, angling for the west end of the town. Overhead, the green of the moon began to illuminate him through breaks in the thick cloud cover. The heat of the day was dissipating, as it always did, bringing a deep chill that dug into Saat’s bones.
“Look at the moon again.” The metallic sound of the voice seemed to be softening, lightening.
“What?” Saat, unsure he heard right, looked around, searching the ground.
“I don’t have optics. The warsuit patches into your visual cortex, so I only see what you see. Look at the moon. I need to take some measurements.”
Saat looked up, and the heavy cloud cover broke, revealing the patchwork green of the moon. Its pale beams bathed the wasteland below, turning the blacks and browns into various shades of green.
“It’s a god, you know … Just like you. The ancients built it, but it grew angry and killed them all. That’s why it’s green … green is the color of anger,” said Saat.
“No, it is green because of the terraforming. People live up there. Or, at least, they used to. It is not a god either, though. Long ago, it was part of the Earth, before breaking off during a collision with an asteroid. It’s just a small planetoid. Do you people think everything is a god?”
“No…” said Saat defensively.
“If I am right, the moon is eight thousand sixty-seven inches farther away from earth, based on its diameter and circumference. That means, assuming a lunar drift of one point five inches per year, that five thousand three hundred and seventy-eight years have passed since my last recorded image of the moon. Saat, where am I? How have I missed over five thousand years?”
“You’re in Mai’a. And … I don’t know why you’re missing the time. They found you … excavated you in the god mines. We find the brains of gods—gods like you—and wake you up, if we can. Sometimes it doesn’t work. Sometimes the god is insane, and destroys things. Sometimes they can tell us secrets; tell us where to find the treasures of the ancients.”
“So you exhume AIs from some kind of AI graveyard? And I was there? How deep underground?” The voice was beginning to lose the flat monotone, taking on a more human characteristic, sounding somewhat feminine.
“You were one hundred meters underground.”
Ahead of them, the town’s totems, or what were left, rose up on the horizon. The raiders had destroyed three of them, breaking the link that encircled the town, robbing them of their power. Four raiders stood in the breach, talking. The faint sound of their voices wafted through the still evening air.
“Mai’a … as in Mayan? The pre-technological culture? Is this Central America?” The voice was definitely sounding like a woman now.
“I don’t know what that is. I don’t care right now. How are we going to get past the raiders?”
The raiders each held an enormous double-handed battle-blade, and flechette bowguns peeked over their shoulders from sheaths on their backs. The sigils etched in their weapons appeared to be done by someone with great power. This wasn’t a normal raid.
Saat crouched low, hiding behind a smoldering cart that lay in front of him. Scattered around the wreckage lay half a dozen of bodies, blown apart when the cart was hit by a projectile. The body closest to him lay face up, and Saat recognized it. Woodmaster Daarce. He’d been sitting in the cart with two of his workers, watching the procession earlier that day. Saat took a deep breath, then another, trying not to feel sick.
“Why do you not just go around them, through some other part?”
“I can’t. The totems … the sigils, they’re active now. They’ll kill anything that tries to get into the town. We have to go through where the raiders destroyed the totems. It’s how they got in, too,” Saat whispered, despite being a couple hundred meters away. He’d heard of sigils that boosted a man’s hearing.
“What???” Saat gripped the side of the cart. The warsuit contracted with his hand, crushing the cart’s ironwood side.
“I do not have long-range weapons access yet. Proving difficult. This is military hardware you have. They don’t let just anyone access and use it. I want you to run right in between them, heading towards the southeast end of the town. Let me show you where.”
A slight vibration tickled Saat’s back, and a flash of silver rose overhead, buzzing softly. The buzzing disappeared as the silver flash rose into the sky, heading over Auburn.
Saat’s right eye flickered, and a view of his town appeared as though he were a bird flying over it. A red dot started pulsing on top of a building Saat immediately recognized as the general store. Smaller, fainter red dots flickered around it.
“Those smaller markers are the life forms I am detecting. Head towards the big flashing marker.”
Saat remembered how the two raiders who caught him had said their raiding party wasn’t taking prisoners. Fear mixed with rage boiled up inside him. Saat stood, stepped out from the cart, and ran right at the raiders. He felt the metal on his back ooze out, covering his body and face, although he could still see.
The raiders stood in a circle, ignoring the desert outside of the town. Even inside the enormous exoskeleton, Saat cut a small figure in the dusk, so he was just a couple meters away before they noticed him.
“HEY!” was all one of the raiders could manage before Saat was between them. Saat’s body, or rather the thing covering him, erupted outward in a million fine needles, a quiet explosion of silver threads flashing in the light of the burning town. The raider closest to him didn’t even have time to turn around; thousands of the needles stabbed into his body, deploying tiny barbs before violently retracting. Saat averted his eyes and kept running as he heard a gurgle and thrashing. A warm mist sprayed across his body. He didn’t wipe it off this time.
Saat flew around the leaking forms of the raiders, heading towards the store. Bodies were strewn across the street, some hacked to pieces, others burned, and others hogtied and executed. Saat tried to ignore it, but his eyes couldn’t help but jump from body to body, looking for, and hoping not to see, a small familiar form.
A raider appeared in a doorway, half naked, struggling to pull his shirt back on. The exoskeleton steered Saat towards the man at full tilt, then a single thin silver wire whipped out, wrapping around the man’s neck. It retracted with a hard jerk. The man’s head tilted, falling back behind his shoulders as his body toppled forward.
“We are almost there, Saat. Incidentally, you appear to be thirteen years old, according to samples the exoskeleton has taken.”
“What does … never mind, I don’t care. Help me find my sister. She’s six years old. She has to be somewhere here. Hid inside a house or something. She’s smart, tough … and I … she just … she’s here.” Saat’s voice was shaky, but determined.
“I am scanning, but there is nothing living inside the buildings, Saat.”
“Well, you missed the raider that came out of Aasat’s house,” Saat accused.
“No. He was accounted for. The first scan showed two life forms in that building, but that raider came out shortly after the second life form disappeared from my tracking screen.”
Saat ran past the gardener’s house, angling off the main road and towards a small dusty house.
“I’m going to try to go behind where that group is,” Saat began as he turned the corner of the house, and almost bumped into a haphazard pile of bodies. Faces, features began to stand out, and he forgot everything else. Haan the teacher, Sochaar the mining team leader, little Suuchi, who was only three years old. He knew every one of these people. And below them, almost invisible, was a lock of brown-gold hair.
“No…”
Saat fell to his knees, tears blinding him as he yanked bodies away, not caring or noticing that the suit was helping. Goodwife Siilar, Gooar the hunter-butcher, and then…
Saat rocked back on his heels, squeezing his eyes shut, heard himself crying, screaming “NO no no no no no no” over and over again, not caring if anyone heard.
“Saat, someone is coming.”
Saat ignored the voice, rocking and crying. He reached out through blurred vision and with great care moved the last body covering a still little form. The exoskeleton shuddered around his ribs. Saat heard a shout and an impact as a body thudded to the ground, but it was all abstract to him. She was missing an arm, victim of a battle-blade. He reached out, touched his sister. Touched her hair, her head.
“I want to call you Quuin.”
“Excuse me?” The voice sounded puzzled.
“You told me I could name you. Your name is Quuin. Burn that into your memory. No matter what happens to me, you’re going to carry that with you as long as you live.”
Saat drew back, a black rage overwhelming him.
“And I want to kill them all.” His voice shook. “All of them.”
“That’s not advisable, Saat…”
Saat jumped up, trembling. He started running again, ignoring the ache in his throat, the burning in his eyes. He retraced his steps, heading for the store. Right towards the concentration of red ticks on the image in his eye.
“Get ready, Quuin. I’m going to run right into them.”
The general store came into view in the distance, flames jumping from the roof high into the night sky. Below, Saat could see where the raiders had made camp, their shaggy mounts lying between packs and bedrolls, most with the saddles still on their backs.
“Are those dogs a threat?” Quuin asked, as a red outline appeared around one of the mounts.
“They will kill me if they can … they’re battlehounds. Quuin, I’m scared. But I have to do this.” Saat’s words came out in between short breaths.
“It is okay, Saat. My job is to protect you. Nothing will get through me to you. The suit has given me full weapons access. Stand by.”
The raiders had built two fires and gathered around them, laughing and joking. As Saat drew closer under the cover of darkness, a brown and gray mount smelled him and rose to its feet, growling.
“This is going to feel strange, Saat. Don’t panic, you’ll still be able to breathe. I’m going to be controlling your head for a while.”
More liquid metal poured over his face, elongating and hardening into a barrel. The metal ran down his neck, firming into thick bands of metallic muscle. The muscle contracted, and Saat’s head moved, tracking the growling mount.
The battlehound charged, metal-capped teeth flashing. Saat ran at it. Behind the hound, raiders jumped up, grabbing weapons.
“I have no rounds for this weapon, so I am fabricating them. You’re going to see green beacons light up in your vision, marking where the fired projectiles fall. Run past them; we need to collect the pieces of exoskeleton I’m about to shoot.”
The battlehound accelerated, barking and exposing sharp iron augers, replacement incisors that extended out of its mouth. Saat gritted his teeth, trying to calm his racing heart and pushed himself to run faster, right at the mount.
“Firing.”
The cannon gave a sharp double report, the barrel retracting from the recoil. A hundred meters distant, the dog’s head snapped backward, and it collapsed, twitching. In Saat’s right eye, a green blip appeared, hovering over the dog. Saat ran past it and saw a silver mass leap out from the dog’s skull. It impacted his back with a thud, re-fusing with the warsuit.
“Firing.”
The raiders were shouting in their own tongue and pointing at him. The rest of the mounts had risen to their feet, barking. The warsuit twisted Saat’s head hard, aiming at the mounts, and the cannon roared, a long staccato burst that made Saat’s ears ring. A swath of the raiders dropped, neat holes the size of a copper coin i
n the center of each of their foreheads.
The mounts went berserk and charged him as a pack. The surviving raiders weren’t as enthusiastic; they spread out, rubbing their sigils to release their power. The closest dog was only three meters away when it leaped, mouth wide open. Saat watched as it slowed, until it was almost hanging in mid-air, metallic teeth shining in the light of the fires.
“Firing.”
The burst was longer, this time, slowed by the time dilation. Light flashed out of the cannon’s suppressor, and a string of spinning rounds exited the gun’s rifled mouth, surrounded by the translucent wobble of an expanding shockwave. Their stabilizing fins fanned open, and the projectiles separated, the suit controlling each one as they wove around obstacles, finding their targets.
Time sped up, and the exoskeleton jerked Saat to the right as the heavy body of the dog fell out of the sky, right where he’d been a nanosecond before. Green blips appeared over the bodies of the dogs, and Saat angled towards them, small impacts thumping his back as the projectiles leaped up, reattaching to the exoskeleton.
The remaining raiders charged as a group, shouting a death chant to bring their sigils to life.
“Firing.”
“WAIT!”
This time, Saat willed the warsuit to slow time down. Everything decelerated, like it was hitting a wall of temporal gelatin. Saat scanned the remaining raiders as the projectiles twisted around debris and bodies, auguring towards their targets.
“Quuin! Look on the right! I think that’s a little kid! Don’t hit it!”
The projectile aimed at the little figure angled downward hard, the edge of the round clipping the figure’s clothes before slamming into the ground. The remaining raiders collapsed, back in real-time.
Saat slowed down, coming to a stop a meter away from the survivor, a little girl gripping a thin Yakuuz needle dagger.
“Hey there. Don’t be scared.” Saat knelt down, trying to appear non-threatening. Good luck with that wearing a giant warsuit, he thought, smiling grimly.
The little girl growled at him, her dirty face wrinkling. She spoke, her voice shrill as she waved the dagger at him. “Don’t come near me, dog! You killed my poppa! You come near me, I’ll kill you!” In Saat’s head, Quuin’s voice translated what she was saying. The little girl was trying to hide her fear, but her eyes were glistening with tears.